Democracy from Below

La Pulla Mixteca, No. 10, Vol. 1, November 1990, The Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales Newspaper Archives

An asamblea in the heart of the Triqui Baja Region, Oaxaca, 1980s, Photo Courtesy of Francisco López Bárcenas

In his current book project, Democracy from Below: The Communal Worlds Indigenous Migrants Created, he follows the lives of Indigenous people from southern Mexico who were among the first significant generation to labor in the US and Mexican Pacific Coast during the 1980s and early 1990s. Drawing on oral histories, traditional and community archives, government records and data, and personal collections in Mexico and the United States, Dr. Ramirez-Lopez highlights the emergence of a grassroots movement centered on Indigenous rights, autonomy, and multi-ethnic and multi-racial solidarity across borders to confront the neoliberal economic changes of the time.

Democracy from Below builds on Dr. Ramirez-Lopez’s dissertation, which received the 2022 W. Turrentine Jackson Dissertation Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (AHA), the 2022 Latinx Studies Section Dissertation Award from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and an honorable mention for the 2022 LASA/Oxfam America Martin Dissertation Award.

Democracy from Below gives attention to the ways Indigenous migrant people’s expressions of their pueblo governance like tequio and asambleas were crucial to build a movement that could address their rights as Native people and find solutions to the problems posed by migration. The book is attentive to the strategies, ideologies, and actions of some of the most visible, political, and cultural efforts by Oaxacan migrants. In doing so, Democracy from Below ruminates about Indigenous migrant’s protracted struggle in the late twentieth century as part of Native American, Chicanx/Latinx, and U.S., and Mexican histories. An early version of a book chapter is available as, “Our Dark Hands and Sore Backs: The Comité Cívico Popular Mixteco and the New Grassroots Activism by Indigenous Mexican Migrants,” Journal of American Ethnic History 43, no. 2 (2024): 5-33.

Additional Projects

Indigenous Migrant Oral History Project (IMOHP):

The IMOHP strives to record the histories of Indigenous migrants in the United States through community partnership and student engagement in an ethical and reciprocal manner. The oral histories conducted for Democracy from Below will be accessible through the IMOHP.

Indigenous Migrant Newspaper Research (IMNR):

The IMNR gathers metadata from newspapers on the diasporic lives of Indigenous migrants in the United States. The IMNR began at Dartmouth College from support of the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality (RMS). As a student-centered learning project, the goal is to build a repository for future scholars and community members as students also learn the skills of digital research, community collaboration, and systematizing.